DuckDuckGo CEO: 'Google and Facebook Are Watching Our Every Move Online. It's Time To Make Them Stop' (cnbc.com) 224
An anonymous reader shares a report from CNBC, written by Gabriel Weinberg, CEO and founder of DuckDuckGo: You may know that hidden trackers lurk on most websites you visit, soaking up your personal information. What you may not realize, though, is 76 percent of websites now contain hidden Google trackers, and 24 percent have hidden Facebook trackers, according to the Princeton Web Transparency & Accountability Project. The next highest is Twitter with 12 percent. It is likely that Google or Facebook are watching you on many sites you visit, in addition to tracking you when using their products. As a result, these two companies have amassed huge data profiles on each person, which can include your interests, purchases, search, browsing and location history, and much more. They then make your sensitive data profile available for invasive targeted advertising that can follow you around the Internet.
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So how do we move forward from here? Don't be fooled by claims of self-regulation, as any useful long-term reforms of Google and Facebook's data privacy practices fundamentally oppose their core business models: hyper-targeted advertising based on more and more intrusive personal surveillance. Change must come from the outside. Unfortunately, we've seen relatively little from Washington. Congress and federal agencies need to take a fresh look at what can be done to curb these data monopolies. They first need to demand more algorithmic and privacy policy transparency, so people can truly understand the extent of how their personal information is being collected, processed and used by these companies. Only then can informed consent be possible. They also need to legislate that people own their own data, enabling real opt-outs. Finally, they need to restrict how data can be combined including being more aggressive at blocking acquisitions that further consolidate data power, which will pave the way for more competition in digital advertising. Until we see such meaningful changes, consumers should vote with their feet.
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So how do we move forward from here? Don't be fooled by claims of self-regulation, as any useful long-term reforms of Google and Facebook's data privacy practices fundamentally oppose their core business models: hyper-targeted advertising based on more and more intrusive personal surveillance. Change must come from the outside. Unfortunately, we've seen relatively little from Washington. Congress and federal agencies need to take a fresh look at what can be done to curb these data monopolies. They first need to demand more algorithmic and privacy policy transparency, so people can truly understand the extent of how their personal information is being collected, processed and used by these companies. Only then can informed consent be possible. They also need to legislate that people own their own data, enabling real opt-outs. Finally, they need to restrict how data can be combined including being more aggressive at blocking acquisitions that further consolidate data power, which will pave the way for more competition in digital advertising. Until we see such meaningful changes, consumers should vote with their feet.
It won't change unless we resist. (Score:5, Informative)
A great way to confound these trackers everywhere is to use an addon like AdNauseam. It will click on everything for you, generating a massive, and false, report regarding your activities.
The only way to make a difference is to hit these giants in the wallet, and once the companies paying for these these personal profiles conclude that they aren't helping their bottom line, the market will have to change in response or lose a lot of potential income.
Re:It won't change unless we resist. (Score:5, Insightful)
While I like the sentiment I doubt it will be effective in the end. Google and FB have huge numbers of talented engineers. They will find ways to dig through any attempts you make to hide your data from them. The fact is, the very usefulness of online services seduces most people into freely sharing everything. Only the most paranoid will succeed in hiding and by doing so they will deny themselves a lot of services and useful benefits of the Internet.
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I have a MacBook Pro and iPhone, as well as a linux server. I don't use google or facebook at all, what services or benefits do I not have access to?
Google and Facebook are tracking you even if you don't have an account.Unless you have all scripts disabled, there is lots of phoning home.
Here's an exercise. Install one of the script blockers that will let you see what is being blocked. Then visit a few popular websites. Now look at what scripts are being blocked. Some will be obvious, but those cryptic ones - look them up. You will be impressed at just who is tracking you. And no FB account needed. Block em all, and let gawd sort em out.
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For Cloud - why aren't you using your own servers or host?
Do you mean servers at home or in a datacenter? Not all cities have a home ISP that allows servers, and colocating a dedicated server in a datacenter tends to be far more expensive than leasing a VPS.
not really a problem.... (Score:3)
Pro tip: never search for "I need new underwear" on the web.
Re:It won't change unless we resist. (Score:5, Interesting)
The KGB members vehemently disagreed. They said that theirs had been the harder job. That while it was easy to get into the U.S., the free society produced so much information that it was difficult for them to pick out the signal from the noise. Every time the National Enquirer or some local newspaper printed a story about the U.S. government hiding a crashed UFO or someone with psychic powers or a plane invisible to radar, they had to use manpower to investigate if this was a real thing or just made-up BS.
Hiding stuff is hard. Making noise is easy. Why try to tackle the herculean task of trying to make yourself invisible to people spying on you, when you can just create the illusion of dozens of images of yourself, and leave the spies with the herculean task of trying to figure out which one is the real you? I've long advocated that the best way to fight browser tracking isn't to try to hide yourself. It's to pollute the data they're collecting about you. Someone needs to come up with a program or browser extension which when turned on follows random links on each page every few seconds (the extension can learn how long based on your actual browsing patterns), sometimes in new tabs, occasionally closing tabs, and occasionally going to google.com and searching random dictionary words to start the process over again.
Every time you step away from the computer, you can just turn that program on to pollute the data in the profile that Facebook, Google, et al have built up on you.
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Every time you step away from the computer, you can just turn that program on to pollute the data in the profile that Facebook, Google, et al have built up on you.
Sounds like a good screen saver, except for the part about random porn, viruses, malware, etc.
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That was my first thought. I definitely don't click on 99% or more of the links I find on the web. And a solid percent of them are obviously code red, do not click.
All it would take is one stumble into one of the malware sites where every click opens three more tabs and two windows, and that program would be mired in dodgy shit until the next time you logged in and shat your pants at what was on the screen. And downloaded. And installed as a toolbar.
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Someone needs to come up with a program or browser extension which when turned on follows random links on each page every few seconds (the extension can learn how long based on your actual browsing patterns), sometimes in new tabs, occasionally closing tabs, and occasionally going to google.com and searching random dictionary words to start the process over again.
Using software to generate false histories is probably prohibited under one of the broad prohibitions in the ToS of your ISP, and, if you happened to be someone that government wanted to harass, might also be construed as knowingly providing false information to a Federal agent (NSA, FBI, etc) either because you're under investigation (but how would you know unless they made contact?) or since it is common knowledge that government agencies spy domestically and collect everything.
It's not like they need muc
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Re: It won't change unless we resist. (Score:2, Interesting)
Nope. Your fuzziness will stand out as a unique pattern. Such methods only work when everyone is using them.
And unless you have a crawler constantly roaming around random pages in the background, it doesn't fuzz your data at all. In fact it gives them an even more accurate picture of what sites you visit.
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A great way to confound these trackers everywhere is to use an addon like AdNauseam. It will click on everything for you, generating a massive, and false, report regarding your activities.
I'm not sure about the relative merits of that or just using something like ghostery [ghostery.com] to simply block trackers. I'd expect that if someone wanted to they could still track you from the clicks with AdNauseam, but it probably wouldn't be worth doing the analysis.
Re:It won't change unless we resist. (Score:4, Interesting)
The only way to get them to change is to force them to pay their users for the use of their data. Because the users' data is used for earning money, a large percentage of the profit should also go to the users.
Re:It won't change unless we resist. (Score:5, Insightful)
We give you pictures of cats and idiotic filters of animal ears on top of your picture, you give us the ability to own your digital behavior history. most people who cared enough to find out what the deal was agreed to it and found it to be a great one.
Re:It won't change unless we resist. (Score:5, Insightful)
We give you pictures of cats and idiotic filters of animal ears on top of your picture, you give us the ability to own your digital behavior history. most people who cared enough to find out what the deal was agreed to it and found it to be a great one.
The difference between internet pioneers and the paranoid, and the rest of the world. After we figured out how to monetize the toobz, it was all downhill in that respect.
As for me, my major personal concern is not so much being tracked, it is that the internet is IMO unusable without ad and script blockers. Pages that take forever to load, jump around when they are loading, and go to a new page and do it all over again.
I discover this anew when once a year or so, I have to disable my blockers for one reason or another, then forget to re-enable them. But I discover that error quickly.
I didn't pay for a fast connection just so I can get modem speed loading due to ads and trackers.
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That would raise awareness of the fact that their personal info would be monetized, leading people to either abandoning the platform due to invasiveness or to people trying to game the system further in order to get extra cash out of the deal
I see no problem with that, considering that's how the big boys make so much money.
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Me neither. Isn't that what this whole thread is about?
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Problem being that many platforms also belong to the same companies. Google for example controls both the most popular phone OS and the most popular desktop browser.
AdNauseam is not allowed on Chrome, and its functionality is not allowed on Android either.
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-Don't use social media: yes it's really possible within certain type of social circles
-Don't use ANY of google's software: Chrome, Android (as only deactivating Android Google Services makes Android Devices unusable)
-Use a real open browser with NoScript and AdBlock Ultimate. if something doesn't work then the hell with it. you'll get used to it.
-Facebook isn't internet. there's forums, chats, usergroups, email, and video sharing websites they
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https://pi-hole.net/ [pi-hole.net]
Re:It won't change unless we resist. (Score:5, Interesting)
It also creates false successes to companies who are using overly disruptive, abusive or misleading ads.
I am sure many of you don't remember the Web in the late 1990's and early 2000's where Popup windows were common form of advertisements. Until the advent of the Popup blocker where the Ad companies realized they were no longer getting money from popups so they had to change their tactics to less obtrusive methods. Now every once in a while we get a re-insurgence of abusive ads, then ad blockers quickly are fixed to stop them.
I am OK with advertising, even targeted advertising on sites, especially sites who offer information and services that I like for free, and do not have other options for a business model. However if the Ad failed to get my attention, then it is the fault of the Ad. And if the Ad got in my way, that made me hate the company that is their fault too.
AdNauseam which tells the Ad Maker this ad worked. So lets do more of it.
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A great way to confound these trackers everywhere is to use an addon like AdNauseam. It will click on everything for you, generating a massive, and false, report regarding your activities.
The only way to make a difference is to hit these giants in the wallet, and once the companies paying for these these personal profiles conclude that they aren't helping their bottom line, the market will have to change in response or lose a lot of potential income.
Because fake news perpetuating hype and bullshit has destroyed the market for news?
Because tens of thousands of fake bots in social media emulating users has destroyed social media markets?
You really think false reports are going to magically dispel the business of marketing bullshit and hit them in their wallet? Yeah right. Factual accuracy is now optional, so these data-masking tactics wouldn't even be effective even if you could convince more than 1% of consumers to engage in it.
Re:It won't change unless we resist. (Score:5, Informative)
https://slashdot.org/~TimothyHollins enthused:
A great way to confound these trackers everywhere is to use an addon like AdNauseam. It will click on everything for you, generating a massive, and false, report regarding your activities.
A better way to defeat them is to use NoScript's Application Boundary Enforcer (ABE - located in the Advanced tab of the Options menu) to forbid their javascripts from running on anything other than their own domains. For instance, here's what I use to block Facebook from running the scripts associated with those ubiquitous "share" icons, as well as with their single-pixel trackers:
Site .facebook.com .fbcdn.net .facebook.com .fbcdn.net
Accept from
Deny INCLUSION(SCRIPT, OBJ, SUBDOC)
Then just block third-party cookies by default, and Presto!, you're only being tracked on Facebook's own site - which you kinda have to put up with, if you use FB at all.
Similar strategies will keep Google, Twitter, Snapchat, and any other social media company from following you around the web, as long as you create ABE scripts to block them outside of their own respective domains.
And, of course, it should go without saying that you'll want to block google-analytics.com, googleadservices.com, and other ad trackers altogether. Fortunately, despite all the Google-hating on /., you don't have to enable any of their ad trackers in order to actually use Google itself, or any of its applications, such as Gmail or Drive
Would that the same were true of, say, Facebook ...
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"It will click on everything for you, generating a massive, and false, report regarding your activities."
As you can see we've had our eye on you for some time Mr. Anderson. It seems that you've been clicking a lot of sites associated with our investigation....
So how do we move forward from here? (Score:5, Interesting)
How do you move forward? Install a blocker and stop them from seeing your movements in the first place.
Install something like HTTP Switchboard or uMatrix, and block the request in the first place. Throw in Ghostery and a script blocker. Make javascript and cookies whitelist only. In my opinion, this should be the default behaviour of web browsers, but since most of the companies who make them are getting ad revenue, that likely won't happen.
In my estimation the average web set will have 5-10 3rd party sites which are nothing but trackers, ads, and analytics. It's none of their fucking business what sites I visit, so my browsers simply don't make requests to them.
Your ad revenue isn't my problem. Your business of tracking people isn't my problem. I haven't consented to the privacy policy of a 3rd party I didn't invite to the party. Your cookie policy? Well, I have one too, and the answer is no.
This won't work for the average web user because it takes time and effort and a willingness to break a website and decide it's not worth using. But until lawmakers clamp down on this, the only solution is to block it yourself and prevent these companies from seeing every site you visit.
Ad companies can suck my balls, because I'm simply going to keep blocking them. And the odd site I find which can't be made to run without the 3rd party crap? Well, there's always the back button and another site.
Re:So how do we move forward from here? (Score:4, Informative)
I doubt you'll see many people willing to go through the effort. Most are willing to be tracked. I have a laptop I use for paranoia's sake. It's got a secure Linux distro and I use it only for things like online banking, nothing else. Other than that, I don't really worry about it, to me it's not worth the trouble. I get targeted ads all the time but I am adult enough to ignore them only buying things I need. For the impulsive it's a problem though.
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Other than that, I don't really worry about it, to me it's not worth the trouble. I get targeted ads all the time but I am adult enough to ignore them only buying things I need. For the impulsive it's a problem though.
It's also a problem for the impatient. The times I have to use the internet bareback it is like swimming through treacle. Bad enough that if ad and script blockers were disallowed, I'd find something else to do with my time.
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Works right up to "let me track you and show you my advertisements or you can't see my content".
You may not care about their ad driven business model, but they do. And it is their content.
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And I'm entirely OK with that.
They need my ad revenue and tracking more than I need their content. I'm simply not playing the game.
I'm perfectly happy to permanently block a website which can't be used by the time I've blocked all of the crap; I do it all the time. It saves me the trouble next time when my blocker just refuses to go there.
You may be unable to live without this shit, but I sure as hell can. I don't
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It's their site and they can do whatever they want with it. As a consumer, it's up to me to decide if it's worth it.
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I'm perfectly happy to permanently block a website which can't be used by the time I've blocked all of the crap
Once the majority of organic results on each page of web search results for a given query are sites that you have blocked for this reason, how do you keep web search engines useful?
Translation (Score:3, Interesting)
Please somebody use DuckDuckGo!!! Please please please.
Everybody knows their data is being slurped in exchange for free services, that's the deal, people are mostly ok with it. You're going to get ads, does it really matter if they're targeted or not?
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Targeted ads are better than random ads. At least they show you things you might like.
Re:Translation (Score:5, Insightful)
Targeted ads are better than random ads. At least they show you things you might like.
More like things you already bought.
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In what world? Not mine.
If there are "targeted ads", that means that some advertiser has built a profile on me, and thinks they know me. I did not agree to that. I did not consent to be part of their database. I do not have a business relationship with them.
And in practice, they get it wrong. All of the time. Before I clamped down my personal phone, I visited the site of a vendor that we use in my work to look something up for someone who needed it desperately right then. Later I started getting targeted ad
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Google tracks everything I do, but in the end I get much better search results because of it. This is the conundrum. Do you want relevant search results, or do you want the search engine to know nothing about you. Maybe there is room for both. I may not care if Google knows that I'm a .Net developer and therefore shows .Net related information when searching for programming related stuff. But maybe I do care when searching for other material that I don't want Google knowing about. There can be a use for b
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If I want search results for a particular language or framework, I just include it as a search term. I dob't need the search engine to know what my favorite programming language is.
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Nope, that is false. The CEO used to work in that area, but none of that applies to DDG, which is completely separate.
Javascript (Score:2, Funny)
Was the single worst thing, after AOL, to ever happen to the WWW.
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Trackers? We don't need no trackers (Score:2)
This is why you clear your data every day. Everything. No exceptions. They'll get fresh information each time and have to correlate it, but they won't be able to see where you've been those previous days. It will be like starting all over.
Granted, when you buy something that is another issue, but as far as being online, clearing your data is the first step. There are others, but this is the easiest.
Re:Trackers? We don't need no trackers (Score:4, Interesting)
Unfortunately, it is no longer enough. Our local ISPs - who are utterly corrupt - are not only selling details that connect us as individual households to our IP address leases, but also are using our billing records to join the dots to our postal location and home address...
If I try and access slashdot on my iPad, I notice that some of the served advertisements [those from Tamboola and others] are geographically specific to within 5 miles of my home address. I've discussed this with my ISP, who are presently trying to claim that they allocate IP blocks on a location-by-location basis. I'm presently trying to determine if this is the truth [which I doubt] and if not true this would go a long way to confirming my suspicions.
However, if your identity can be ascertained from the moment you connect, even a daily purge of your network access technology simply won't be enough.
Lastly, if you haven't already tried it, take a look at panopticlick, from the EFF, here:- https://panopticlick.eff.org/ [eff.org] It is a really effective way of determining whether or not your web browsing setup of choice can be used to track you based on nothing more than the configuration of the browser.
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Weird.
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If this is actually, technically possible, then I suppo
2 defense strategies (Score:3)
First, use browsers and plugins that avoid loading such trackers.
Second, use browsers and plugins that send bogus tracking info to poison the data pool that still gets collected.
Tip of the iceberg (Score:4, Interesting)
Think of all the WiFi and Bluetooth IDs that are ubiquitous in our modern world. Wherever you go, your phone sees all these IDs.
Turn off your GPS location - it doesnt matter. Someone else's phone will detect your phone (by way of Bluetooth or WiFi IDs) and report it tagged with its own GPS location.
Buy a smart TV - it will note the presence of devices as well and (because of the giant data bucket all this is being fed into) know who's home it is in, what the GPS location is. And your phone will note the presence of your TV. It's a big web of device detection.
Correlate all this data, and you have a really, really detailed account of where you go, who you associate with, what you watch, and when. You can't really opt out unless you don't use any computerized gadgets because someone else's gadget will report your gadget for you.
Web browser tracking is just one piece of this giant data collecting puzzle but the rabbit hole goes a lot further...
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NoScript ... (Score:3)
... for the win.
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The new interface is dogshit.
Surely we can fix this (Score:2)
The problem is that technology "created" this problem. Specifically the notion of "cookies" and embedded hyperlinks.
There must be a way to add a plugin to firefox that will strip information from hyperlinks, i.e. http://foo.bar.com/link.jpeg?ID=AABBCCDDEEFF112233, and render http://foo.bar.com/link.jpeg
There must be a way to have not only a "block list" but have a embedded link blacklist, i.e. embedded links get text that say "This link blocked," So, when you click on a link or take some positive action, yo
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The War is already over. You lost. (Score:5, Insightful)
Consumers are both lazy and don't give a shit about security or privacy. This statement is validated by the fact that these mega-corps now have successfully amassed huge data stores on billions of humans. The only way change would ever happen is if security and privacy were the default setting in the default program. Anything else requires effort that only 0.01% of society will care to expend, and any change to the default will be fought by mega-corps who rake in hundreds of billions by preying on insecurity and a lack of privacy.
Oh, you stopped carrying a smartphone because you didn't want to be tracked? What the hell difference does that make when 99.99% of society around you is still carrying one? It only makes you stand out apart from the rest now, and even more observable as an anomaly. Being secure now creates insecurity.
Sorry, but the fight for privacy and security is done. The war is over, and privacy and security lost.
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Yeah, I can tell from all the people on Slashdot saying we are better off being tracked. Not.
It ain't over till it's over.
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This is the most insightful troll post I've ever read on Slashdot.
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Consumers are both lazy and don't give a shit about security or privacy.
Very true. Also, 'bread and circuses'. So long as they're amused and your data collection/spying is not right in front of their face, they don't even think about it.
Oh, you stopped carrying a smartphone because you didn't want to be tracked? What the hell difference does that make when 99.99% of society around you is still carrying one?
It means that the lack of data available on me is lost in the noise of all the data from the mouth-breathing hordes they do have data on. Oh and by the way I've never owned a smartphone and never will, I have a $50 plastic LG dumbphone AT&T gave me for free, I physically disabled the GPS (shorted the antenna to ground), and it's off 95% of t
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Consumers are both lazy and don't give a shit about security or privacy.
The first is true, the second not quite. Technology goes out of its way to lie to users. Private browsing for example is a placebo at best, any ad network worth its salt keeps track of enough information that removing session information alone wont do anything good - your IP alone would be enough to connect it back to your normal profile. Then you have various other features that either do not mention their tracking at all or have a not quite off switch that just hides the information from the user or uses less obvious means to track them.
Sorry, but both are painfully true regardless of how technology actually behaves. 99% of consumers don't give a shit about privacy. That's rather obvious by the oversharing addiction on social media. "Secure" messaging app gets hacked? Oh well, keep using it. Private browsing? Walk down any street and ask 100 people about private browsing. I can assure you almost all of them won't have a damn clue as to what you're talking about. Read a EULA? No one does that. The give-a-shit level with security g
It's also time to improve DuckDuckGo (Score:2)
Re:It's also time to improve DuckDuckGo (Score:5, Interesting)
Can you elaborate on what was wrong with DuckDuckGo's results? I have been using it for years. Certainly it's very different from Google's results but to me that is a benefit -- I am fundamentally offended by a company trying to control what information I find based on 1) what the unwashed masses seem to want and 2) what Google's predictive analytics have determined is the best approach for their customers to attempt to separate me from my money. If I wanted to consume whatever slop was put in front of me by the corporations, I'd watch TV.
</rant> I know it's hard to characterize what counts as "better" search results, but I really would like to know what the usage model is where Google's results count as "good." Is it that you have a specific question in mind and you want to find an answer? Because my approach is totally different: I have a specific topic in mind and I want to see the range of what has been written about it so I can decide which source is the least stupid, biased, and evil.
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I have yet to find any shortcomings in DDG, I get relevant results.
If you're looking for results on breaking news, Google is better. But for general knowledge I find DDG better, and less full of crap than the big G.
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Then again, the comparison is to Google, who have their spying eyes deeply embedded literally everywhere. It's tough competition.
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Consider StartPage search, which uses Google as a backend but blocks all the tracking BS that comes with it.
We need alternatives (Score:2)
I see all these posts talking about technological workarounds for what is really a social & corporate problem. The only real solution here is to stop using sites that track you. We've created this problem by allowing a monoculture to be established. Everybody uses Google & Chrome, then complains when they are being tracked. Maybe it's worth pulling up Bing, Yahoo, and DuckDuckGo sometimes, even if they aren't as good at searches. Privacy is a part of the overall product they are offering, so if
Government Oversight Highly Unlikely (Score:4, Interesting)
The reason is simple. Today, governments around the world can turn up at the doorstep of Google, Facebook, Microsoft and others with a National Security Letter (NSL) and demand information in a way that the companies concerned are prohibited from discussing. In other words, it is in the interests of governments all around the world to allow these companies to become private extensions of the surveillance state. It's also much cheaper for the governments concerned - they can demand access by law - and at zero cost to them...
Unfortunately, that "cost angle" adds another twist, another dimension to this picture. In the case of the very largest providers concerned, governments know that the costs incurred from answering NSLs can soon become very, very expensive. Now, governments are not going to want to upset these companies to the point where they start to resist such demands [witness the Microsoft defense against the servers located in the Irish Republic], so said governments need to find a way to "sweeten" the deal. I have no knowledge of what they might be willing to do in such scenarios, but I am inclined to look at, for example, the case of Microsoft's purchase of both Skype and Hotmail.
When Microsoft made the purchases, these two companies were still in early growth stages and (IIRC) neither were operating at a profit. In the case of both acquisition, Microsoft then had to spend a very considerable sum of money to make changes. In the case of Skype, for instance, they changed the infrastructure model so that all calls, instead of being point-to-point, were re-routed via Microsoft's own internal servers, so Microsoft then had the potential [if required] to intercept and/or record Skype calls. So the question becomes: how do you make such a deal attractive to Microsoft?
Perhaps - again, I don't have any evidence of this - as a government you might be willing to strike a deal with respect to Corporation Tax? Or to award contracts? Or both? The point being that, ultimately, the relationship between these internet giants and the governments who are supposed to regulate them is already far too cozy for us to consider the relationship as "formal and polite"...
Add to this the truly massive amount of money and resource these companies can afford to spend on lobbying and you start to get an understanding of how unlikely meaningful government regulation can be. In fact, ironically, only the EU, which isn't a single government and which doesn't have the power to tax these corporations directly, seems to have been remotely successful in trying to curb their powers. And even their successes have been extremely limited.
Bottom line: ain't going to happen.
Re:Government Oversight Highly Unlikely (Score:4, Insightful)
If you're waiting for the US Government to do something about this, you'll be waiting almost as long as you will for the tracking companies to do something themselves through some sort of 'voluntary code of practice'.
For anything worth doing, you need a government not owned by the businesses at risk here. The Europeans look to be making quite some inroads into this sort of thing with GDPR and the like. They don't outlaw tracking by any means, but at least raise the cost of doing business a bit. That won't stop the big companies of course, but it's a start.
In the meantime, adblock, noscript, ghostery, privacy badger etc are really your only defence - if they don't get it in the first place, then they can't misuse it. I predict there'll be some actual tracking limiting laws coming out of Europe in about 5 years time - it still won't stop tracking or profiling entirely, but it'll put further dents in those activities as a business model, and give the advertisers a less certain destination for their ads (which in turn will devalue the tracking/profiling activity somewhat).
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The Europeans look to be making quite some inroads into this sort of thing with GDPR and the like.
In May comes the GDPR [eugdpr.org] in Europe. This impacts not just of organisations within Europe, but "it applies to all companies processing the personal data of data subjects residing in the Union, regardless of the company’s location". It includes the right to be forgotten. I can see many people asking Google to forget them -- that will be a really interesting battle, although even if the EU 'wins' it will be impossible to verify.
Read about it ... and google will know — one off the links of the EU GDPR
Time to poison the well? (Score:3)
76 percent of websites now contain hidden Google trackers, and 24 percent have hidden Facebook trackers
So what we need are plug-ins for the major browsers that independently visit a mass of other websites while we are busy doing whatever we do online.
So while you are getting your fix of politics, hard-core, cat videos or teen angst there is another "user" with the same browser footprint that is visiting recipe sites, finding out how to fix the brakes on a Mustang, searching gift ideas for octogenarians and checking the symptoms of gonorrhea in sheep
Once the advertisers realise that most of the "tracks" they are following are worthless, there will be little incentive for them to advertise online. Then the whole "free" (gratis) internet will collapse and we'll only have paywalled sites and government propaganda machines to visit.
Not Washington but Brussels (Score:3)
I'm just not that worried (Score:5, Insightful)
When I read stories like this I think about that XKCD comic about the guy with megabit encryption getting hit with a $2 wrench until he gives up his password. There's just much, much easier ways to oppress me than taking away a bit of my privacy so they can sell me crap.
Ironically it's what the masses want. (Score:2)
The sad reality of this situation is that everyone wants "free" services. People love free E-mail, free cloud storage, free search engines but in the end no one is willing to pay for them. I've been long aware that they do track if anyone's even paid slight attention to banner ads because the sites you visit tend to follow you around in the ads. I mean seriously, do a search for something on newegg and bang suddenly that item follows you around on ad banners. Other hints such as google allowing you to u
11 trackers = B grade?? (Score:3)
This page has 12 trackers on it. (Score:4, Informative)
I run Ghostery, and this slashdot page has 12 trackers on it.
The CNBC article linked in the summery has 21 trackers on it.
It's completely out of control. I've switched to Duck Duck Go as my search (try it, it's just as good as Google). I run Ghostery on all my devices. Still, there's no way to avoid it unless you disable cookies and Javascript, and at that point the web stops functioning.
I think a regulatory solution will ultimately be required.
Washington? Meaningful changes? (Score:2)
Fundamentalist baptist apocalypse (Score:2)
The fundamental baptists used to talk a lot about a one world government and "the Beast", an entity controlled by the anti-Christ that would track everyone at all times,much like the "internet" does. Everyone would be assigned a number. This was always advertised as being a social security number, a phone number or IP address would make more sense. One of the prophets had a vision of a dragon rising up from the masses with ten heads. One of the heads was damaged in some way, and the anti-Christ was the o
Blocking some is possible... (Score:2)
Very unpatriotic ... (Score:2)
... stance.
While governments are forbidden to spy on its own citizens, nothing says they can't simply buy surveillance shit from private spying corporations.
Think of the children.
uBlock + uMatrix (Score:2)
Opening only what I need. Can be tedious at times but well worth it IMHO.
Does google sell to employers? (Score:2)
I wonder if google sells to more than just advertisers. Imagine this scenario
A prospective employer is interested in candidate Juan Pingalarga. Wouldnâ(TM)t it be nice if big data could tell the employer âoemr Pinagalarga frequents hentai websites, searches for my little pony, watches firearms vids on YouTube and reads anti-government propaganda. It is our AIâ(TM)s evaluation that mr pingalarga would be a liability to your company. Do not hire. âoe
Far-fetched? Too cray cray to be pla
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Users don't care that much about privacy, if they did you would see Facebook and Google Chrome and Google search lose users to DuckDuckGo and Firefox and would dump their Facebook pages. Instead these services and sites are doing very well and while users may say privacy is a concern. Their actions say different. I'm sure DuckDuckGo is desperate to gain some users, but clearly like with Mozilla banging that same privacy drum nobody really cares.
I think it's a matter of with search engines, is a little less privacy worth better results. I tried DuckDuckGo a while ago and it truly was awful for searching the web. It was worse than using Bing. Sadly, I always return to Google because everyone else's web-search engines are crap.
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I find DDG gives me shitty results when researching how to fix my old truck. For example, my window regulator motor died on the drivers side the other day and I wanted info on fixing it, not where to buy a motor in America (I'm in Canada). Most of Googles results are usually to various forums such as F150.net vs DDG mostly giving me results that are too general or where to buy.
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They have his own web crawler and also forward queries.
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] "DuckDuckGo's results are a compilation of "over 400" sources, including Yahoo! Search BOSS; Wikipedia; Wolfram Alpha; Bing; its own Web crawler (the DuckDuckBot); and others."
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